1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a converting device for medical image data which express the state of one pixel of a medical image by using effective bits, which are part of a plurality of bits for one pixel, and further express data other than those for the medical image by using a part of redundant bits, which are different from the effective bits.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, for the medical image data, formats adhered to the standard of, for example, ACR-NEMA (American college of radiology—national electrical manufactures association) V2.0 or DICOM (digital imaging and communications in medicine) are used. In such medical image data, personal data relating to a patient are expressed in the form of tag data, which are separate from actual data. Therefore, with the deletion of the tag data, the personal data can be concealed without making any influence to the actual data.
However, in those medical image data that were formed before the above-described standards were established, personal data were, in many cases, embedded in actual data. For example, of all bits (for example, 12 bits) for one pixel, some (for example, lower 8 bits) of these bits are used for the data of each pixel of a medical image, and the rest (for example, upper 4 bits) of the bits are used for each pixel of a text image that indicates personal data. In the case of such medical image data, the personal data cannot be concealed by deleting the tag data.